Webinar: SimpleLink Sensor to Cloud

My name's Nick Smith. I'm a product marketing engineer in the wireless group here at Texas Instruments. And I focus specifically on low-power RF. So that's sub-1 gigaHertz, ZigBee, Thread, and Bluetooth Low Energy, and standards like that. Throughout this presentation, I'm going to give you a quick overview of sensor-to-cloud architectures-- what we're seeing happen in the industry, some general applications that we see being used. And then I'll dive specifically into what Texas Instruments' solution for sensor-to-cloud networks is.
Also on the line with me is Andres Blanco. He is an applications engineer here in the Wireless group. And he is a product owner of sensor-to-cloud on the sub-1 gigahertz side. So a quick overview-- like I said, I'll talk a little high-level about what kind of sensor-to-cloud applications we're seeing, what specifically TI's solution offering is. And so today, I'm going focus specifically on using sub-1 gigahertz on the sensor side.
So I'll dive a little deeper into why you sub-gig-- what are the values and advantages there? And then I'll talk through what TI's sub-gig software solution is. And at the very end, I'll leave you with some how-to-get-started notes. Throughout this presentation, I've included relevant web links to TI.com, where it's useful. So you can take the PDF and get a lot of the same material on TI.com.
So starting out with some sensor application sectors-- we see sensor-to-cloud applications in a variety of different sectors. So whether that's building automation, where you have a security system with, maybe, low-power sensors reporting in to a main panel and then having cloud connectivity, so users can interact from anywhere in the world-- from their devices, from their computers-- or in factories, for instance, maybe for asset tracking, or in big retail deployment-- some of the areas we see it.
Today, I'll focus mostly on building automation use cases for sensor-to-cloud. And two specific ones that I want to spike out are security systems and HVAC systems, that both apply well to sensor-to-cloud deployment.
So in security systems, for instance, you have some low-power nodes, low-power sensors, like glass-break detectors, door and window sensors, motion detectors, electronic smart locks. You have low-power sensors that need to be running off battery, cover a full building. But you also want to control them from the cloud.
So if you use a sub-gig network on the sensor side, you need some sort of gateway to have cloud connectivity. And that's where the sensor-to-cloud solution comes in. And then, on HVAC side, you typically will have a thermostat. But you might have some deployed sensors, some environmental sensors that remotely measure the temperature and report back to the thermostat, which then interacts with the cloud to give users control or different visualizations.
So those are the two use cases that I'll be talking about today. Again, I put the link there-- TI.com/SimpleLink, if you want to learn more about these use cases. The technology we'll be talking about today is a part of the Texas Instruments' SimpleLink platform. So that's a platform of hardware devices, ARM-based wired and wireless MCU devices, that are all tied together by a common SDK.
And you can see, in the diagram there, the SDK tying together all of these end equipments, with the different technologies at the top. So you could develop your application on a Bluetooth device, for instance, and, in this SDK, abstract the hardware functionality of that device. So you can then port a lot of your code to, say, a sub-1 gigahertz device from a BLE device.
So if you're reading an ADC on the BLE device in your application, you can port that code to the sub-gig device, using the common SDK. A quick look at a typical topology-- whether I'm talking about the HVAC systems or the building security systems for a sensor-to-cloud type use case-- so you have the sensor and actuator side kind of at the end of your network-- this node side.
Then they basically report data back to some router and gateway, which then interact with the cloud. And that cloud gives you that cloud interaction. The network gives you the ability to remote control through your device or a computer, interacting with the cloud-- and then back down.
So a typical flow would be, let's say, in a security system, the dorm window sensor senses some breach. That data is stored. It's up in the cloud. Then it's presented on some dashboard or device to the user. Either the user or the system analyzes that data, makes some decision. And then a command is sent back down, from the cloud, out through the low-power network to actuate some action.
So for instance, door and window sensor reports some breach. And then an action is taken to interact with the electronic door lock and lock the door, which is where the actuation would come in. That's a typical topology that we're talking about with sensor-to-cloud.
OK-- so I'm going to go next to a high-level overview of what TI's solution for these type of sensor-to-cloud networks is. I'll cover that at a high level, talk about the software and hardware. And then we'll dive into some of the components a little deeper, specifically the sub-1 gigahertz network that TI offers for these solutions.
So if you look-- sensor-to-cloud-- as I said, you have this low-power network on the sensor side. This could be a number of networks. It could be a ZigBee network. It could be a sub-gig network, a thread network. Today, we're talking about the sensor-to-cloud solution-- the context of sub-1 gigahertz networks.
So on the sensor side, you have a low-power sub-1 gigahertz star network. The sensor side will have things, as I mentioned, like temp sensors-- maybe reporting back to a thermostat-- or security system sensors, like glass-break detectors-- some of these sensors that are battery-powered and will report back to some main collector node that collects all of these inputs in the security system.
I'll get into a little more about the actual sub-gig and where you can find examples. But there are examples for these type of sensors in the software that we offer. And I'll talk a little more in depth, coming up here, about the devices that support these type of sensors.
So then, passed the low-power sensors, there is a collector and gateway. So that collector collects all this sub-gig data coming from the low-power sensors, like temperature or dorm window sensors, and is the central device in your star network. So it collects all that data. And it provides a bi-directional link between the sensor nodes and the cloud side.
A lot of times, this collector and gateway will integrate security features, to make sure that the user's data is protected and your data is protected. And in the context of the TI solution, this gateway example-- which we'll talk about a little more coming up-- can be flexible. Meaning that the gateway can be based on a Linux-based environment, if you're looking for an advanced user control or some more processing power. Or it can be based on an embedded environment, using key TI-RTOS, which will be lower power, a little more cost sensitive, and have some other advantages there.
So again, I'll get some a little more in-depth into the gateway here in a second. And then, from the gateway, you have the cloud side. So there's an IoT cloud application running there that communicates with the gateway. And that allows sensor data to be sent all the way from the sub-gig network side, through the gateway, to the cloud-- can be sent and received with bi-directional communication.
And again, in the context of the solution that TI is offering, the cloud connectivity is flexible. So right now, we will demonstrate the solution using some cloud partners, whether it's AWS or Watson or some examples with other cloud partners. But the way this solution is architected, actually, is flexible. So somebody using this solution could plug-in their cloud partner of choice. It's not locked down to a specific cloud partner.
And really quick-- if we talk about the little hardware and software pieces of each of these, again, on that sub-gig network, star network side, we have the SimpleLink sub-link gigahertz stack-- the 15.4 stack from Texas Instruments. I'll get in-depth into that stack. But it's developed in-house. It's a out-of-box solution, ready-to-go, star sub-gig network.
That makes up the sensor side and the collector. And the hardware there are the simple link, CC13x2 wireless MCUs. Those are sub-1 gigahertz and dual-band wireless MCUs from Texas Instruments. So wireless MCUs-- meaning that you have both the radio and an application core onboard. And I'll cover this a little more in-depth.
And then dual-band-- meaning that, with a single radio, with a single device, you can use both Bluetooth Low-Energy and sub-gigahertz concurrently, both fully-connected networks. So I talk a little bit more about exactly what that hardware is, coming up here. And then the gateway side-- we have both a Linux and an embedded gateway reference.
The Linux reference is shown on the tool called the BeagleBone Black. And the embedded reference is shown on the Wi-Fi devices-- the CC32xx devices. Those devices are part of that same simple link platform that I introduced in the beginning, meaning you can take advantage of the common development environment and some of the code portability.
And again, I tried to put all relevant links on these pages, so you can go look at the examples. And in the cloud application-- so on the cloud side, as I mentioned, we demonstrate this solution with a couple of cloud partners, like AWS or IBM-Watson. But it's flexible. The code's there for you. So if you do need to create a solution with the cloud partner of your choice, that's possible here.
OK, we're going to dive a little deeper into exactly what pieces of software make-up be sensor-to-cloud solution. So at an overview, the high-level software model-- you can see the green-ish boxes there in the corner. Those are your sensor nodes. Those are leveraging that simpling sub-1 gigahertz stack, offering from TI the TI15.4 stack. This is an 802 15.4 base star network stack.
So that's included in the simple SimpleLink SDK. The nodes are leveraging that stack. And then they're running a sensor application. Then you go to the code processor. So this is going to be the central node of your network. Again, that's the TI15.4 stack on those CC13xx devices. So it's receiving inputs from those sensors and passing them, via [INAUDIBLE], to your host device.
That'd be either the Linux device, which is a Sitara device, or the Wi-Fi device that I mentioned-- the CC13xx. So whichever host device you're using, that's running the TI15.4 stack collector application. So again, that's the central point of your star network. It's running that-- that application.
And it's also running a gateway application with the cloud service. It's providing that cloud connection with the cloud partners. And then there's a web application that runs on your browser, so you can see the link all the way from a low-power sub-gig sensor up to the cloud.
Again, if you want if you want to look a little more in-depth at the Linux gateway solution, this shows the simple software block diagram of the Linux solution, which is based on that Sitara processor. The sensor side is the same. It's still a sub-1 gigahertz star network, based on that 15.4 stack.
Based on our LaunchPad-- so you can see a little more in-depth block diagram of the launch pad there, showing the radio and the MCU embedded on the device, and a BeagleBone Black, which hosts the Sitara device that will act as the central node that's running a Linux kernel. It's running the 15.4 collector application. And it's running the gateway application.
So that this is a look at what that Linux solution looks like. Again, I put a link in the top corner, so you can get right to that reference design. This one-- I apologize for the typo with the title. But this is actually the embedded solution. So this is the solution leveraging that simple link Wi-Fi device-- that CC32xx device. And again, the 32xx device is running TRITOS.
And the SimpleLink Wi-Fi stack-- it will be running the 15.4 collector application, as well as a gateway client there. So two different solutions. There's trade-offs-- whether you would pick a Linux gateway or an embedded gateway. Both of them are supported with the g.I. Ecosystem. As a quick look at the software pieces I will go in depth coming up on what exactly the 15.4 stack is and what some of the advantages are.
But I do want to touch very quickly on the devices I've been talking about. So the SimpleLink CC13x2 devices are those sub-gig and multi-band devices. This is the basic architecture. They have an ARM Cortex M4F. They have an onboard radio. They have a sensor controller engine, which I'll talk about here in a second. 352 at flash-- 256 of RAM. And then, they're very different peripherals.
So the application MCU-- that ARM Cortex M4F-- that's going to run your application. That's going to run TI RTOS, your stack. Everything will run in there. That radio core-- so software-defined radio with, basically, an M0 core that runs all the radio functionality-- the sensor controller is a pretty differentiated piece of these devices. It's actually a proprietary 16-bit core that can run independently of that ARM Cortex M4F or the radio. And it's programmable.
So what that's useful for is-- it's ultra low-power. So it can monitor and wait for some sensor input-- make some decision, while running at very, very low power-- down to 1 microamp range-- and then wake up the rest of the system when some of event happens or when needed. That's a high level block diagram of the device. This is a little more in-depth of which peripherals are included and the block diagram of those CC13xx devices.
But one thing I did want to strike out here is some of the power numbers that are coming with that sensor controller. So this table is showing SPI reading-- so how many wake-ups per second. And you can look at the far right column-- that 2 megahertz mode, which is on the CC13x2 devices-- even waking up 20, 100 times a second take a SPI reading-- you're down in just a handful of micro-amps-- 1.41 microgram, 3 micrograms.
So for something like a motion detector, in your sensor-to-cloud network-- so motion detectors in your low-power sub-giger-- it's 15.4 stack. That motion detector node can actually monitor a PIR. It can read a comparator. So if you're reading at, like, 100 Hertz, you can read a comparator as low as 2 micro-amps. If you get some input and motion is detected-- can wake up that M4F in the radio, transmit back through your sub-gig star network up to the cloud, and then take some action or provide some input.
So that's a look at the hardware, just so you have in your mind, when we're talking about that sensor-to-cloud solution, the subject side-- that low-power star network provided by TI-- the 15.4 stack-- that is running on those CC13xq devices. So now you have an overview of sensor-to-cloud solutions, what it is, what we have to offer at a high level.
I want to dive a little deeper into why you would select sub-gig. As I mentioned, we also support sensor-to-cloud solution with ZigBee. So we support other 802.15.4 sensor-to-cloud solutions. But I'm focusing on sub-gig today.
So some reasons and advantages of why you would want sub-gigahertz for that little-power sensor network-- when you're defining a system and you're trying to select with wireless technology you're using for an application, maybe you have to weigh the factors of range, how far do I need to get on a single hop with this network?-- power-- does this need to run, low power, on a coin-cell battery? Does it have main power? Do I need to connect to a smartphone? And how much data do I need to get through?
So in some of these applications I'm talking about, with building security, remotely deployed door and window sensors or motion detectors, or with HVAC systems, where you may need to have a sensor up on your unit in the attic or outside, it's very important to both cover a lot of range but also be at a very low power, because a lot of these sensors are deployed remotely. They're running off point-cell batteries.
So what's our sub-1 gigahertz solution from TI-- that 15.4 stack-- you can actually get the benefit of a very long range that can cover even commercial deployments, large buildings. These security systems don't apply just to residential. It could be a commercial building. So the sub-gigahertz has the range to cover that building at a very low power, running for multiple years, on a coin cell battery.
So if we look at some of the trade-offs here, you can see that sub-gig is going to give you that long range. It has the ability to be a mesh network. But oftentimes, a star network is going to cover the whole deployment, so you won't need a mesh solution. And it can run off a point-cell battery.
It has enough throughput for those low-power sensor nodes to send the data that they need to send. And one of, maybe, the gaps, using sub-1 gigahertz is you don't have phone connectivity out at the nodes. But I mentioned that dual band or multi-band solution on the CC13x2 devices-- that will provide your smartphone connectivity. So I'll talk a little more about that here coming up.
Again, the trade-off-- sub-gigs-- you get the most distance. You don't have as much bandwidth. But you do have enough for these low-power nodes. And then you're the lowest power. So again, you can run, on a coin-cell battery, multiple kilometers. It depends on your environment. If you're a line-of-sight-- you can go tens of kilometers, sometimes even hundreds of kilometers.
You can cover a full building, a commercial deployment, with its low-power sub-gig network. And it will help simplify your deployment. It'll minimize gateways, compared to your traditional mesh networks, and cover a lot of range. Again, it can run for multiple years on a coin-cell battery.
That means you can deploy a dorm window sensor, using the 15.4 sub-gig star network. With a coin-cell battery, it can run for 5, 10 years on that battery, reporting data up through the cloud-- giving users information and the ability to control and actuate from anywhere in the world.
And sub-gig is also a very robust and secure link. So for dense environments, like in a building or in an urban setting, you can have an added level of reliability there. The 2.4 gigahertz band is very crowded. So there's a lot of interference. And sub-gig can also use frequency-hopping to be resilient to jammers.
It also has lower attenuation with walls and obstacles and turning corners. So it's perfect for those deployments-- like I said, in the attic maybe or in a large commercial office, where you're measuring temperature at the nodes and reporting it back to some central point. One of the challenges there is, when you're deploying these sub-gig networks for the whole building.
There's not really a standard in the sub-1 gigahertz space, just like BLE or ZigBee or Thread at the 2.4 gigahertz space. So you either have to build up a network from scratch or use something like the 15.4 stack offered from TI, which is ready-made. That will provide your network solution, the sensor-to-cloud reference that I mentioned. It provides your gateway solution. And that allows you to have a full deployment.
So with that, I want to move on and talk briefly about what I've mentioned is multi-band and dual-band. This will allow you to have that sensor-to-cloud solution, all the way from the low-power sub-gig node to the cloud, but also will allow you to have smartphone connectivity down at the node.
So there's a couple of use cases. You can do sub-gig gigahertz and BLE beaconing. That's where the node is a part of that full 15.4 sub-gig network but can, concurrently-- at the same time-- send BLE beacons, to send messages for nearby devices. I'll talk about some use cases for that. --Can also do role-switching, where the node is either a part of that network or is connected to the phone over BLE. But it's not doing them at the same time.
So you can use a BLE connection for maybe commissioning the device into the network or upgrading the software on the device before it switches back into sub-1 gigahertz and rejoins the network.
And then the final use case is full concurrency. That means that the node is a part of both the sub-gig network and can be BLE-connected at the same time. So this is suitable for a lot of applications. One notable one is commercial door lock systems like hotels, or thermostats, so where that door lock is a part of that sub-gig low-power network, kind of the backbone network, but you need to have that smartphone connectivity to interact with users.
And I'm going to cover a couple of use cases here. So one beginning use case is maybe sensors in your home, so something like a smoke detector, or a sensor like that that's reporting back to that central node, like I said. And so for instance, a device will send these BLE beacons, these advertisements out while it's maintaining that connection to the sub-gig network. So you know, as you come home or something, a sensor on a garage door can send a beacon and let you-- give you some alert on your phone to say, hey, you know, you've arrived home. I'll shut the security system off using the sub-gig network.
Another use case is that role switching that I mentioned, where it's either sub-gig or BLE. And you can use this to do a firmware update. So say a connected lighting system maybe that's running on a sub-gig backbone, if you want to upgrade the firmware there, BLE will provide a much faster firmware upgrade with more throughput in the link. So you can swap the device into BLE really quick, update the firmware, and then swap back and rejoin the sub-gig network.
To that same point, with the role switching, you can achieve that for commissioning. So you buy a device, for instance, like a smoke detector, take it out of the box, commission it into your sub-gig network with BLE, switch over to sub-gigahertz. And it's a part of your home network.
Concurrency, that's the full sub-gig and full BLE network at the same time. So that will allow you to participate in both networks at once. So for instance, in a commercial door lock deployment that I mentioned before, all the door locks can report down to the main server or the main node down at the desk giving you that gateway ability to communicate to a network.
So that's your Sensor to Cloud deployment. You have the sub-gig network at the desk. You have the central node communicating with the gateway through your Wi-Fi network. But each of the door lock nodes can also have BLE connectivity that allows users to interact with the door directly.
So for instance, you walk in. You can open the door with your phone. You can get messages that say hey, your room's been cleaned, so on and so forth.
So all of those use cases are supported by the Texas Instruments devices that I mentioned, the CC13x2 devices. Specifically, the CC1352R device supports those dual-band use cases. And that can integrate with our TI 15.4, that low-power sub-gigahertz star network. So you can have that star network with a node that is using concurrency to talk to smartphones and the sub-gig network which has a central collector point and a gateway that allows you to cloud connectivity. And that's all supported by the Sensor to Cloud Solution.
And I know I've been missing that 15.4 network a lot, the SimpleLink sub-1-gigahertz stack offered from Texas Instruments. So I do want to go a little deeper and kind of describe exactly what that network is. So the sub-gig network, that 15.4 stack, it's based on the 802.15.4 IEEE standard. So that defines kind of your FI and MAC. So TI has built that solution. That's available today.
There's many standards at sub-gig space, so interoperability is a challenge at the sub-gig space. And different silicon vendors offer different stack solutions. It's still important to make sure that the stack is based on a standard so you know that it's robust and then your hardware doesn't lock you into a single vendor. So that's why the TI solution is based on the 802.15.4 IEEE standard at the FI and MAC layer.
On top of that, we've added some functionality to give you a full stack, a full sub-gig solution. So we've added security to the stack. That includes message integrity. That includes encryption, several security features there, and network management, so forming the network, discovering devices, joining and leaving the network.
With the 15.4 stack, that SimpleLink sub-gig stack from TI, all of this is handled. So if you want to be at the sub-gig space and have a low-power sub-gig star network, you can take this solution out of the box and have a robust proven network that's up and running. So again, the TI solution provides AES encryption, that message integrity code, and a link management layer that helps do those network management functionalities.
And again, I provide the link here. So there's a video that describes more about this stack. You can get right into the SDK, and find examples, and get started with it. At a high level, you can go to TI.com/longrange and you can learn a little bit more about this stack and what all it entails.
So again, just to reiterate why exactly we built this solution, that sub-gig band, it's fragmented. There's not a standard out there today that dominates the market. Several different vendors offer different standards. We've built a very robust stack, very easy to use.
And again, some of those use cases, the applications you see are becoming complicated. You have a bunch of sensors that are pointing to a central node. You need commissioning. You need the ability to do firmware upgrades. You need security. All of that is provided within our stack today. And if you were to start basically from zero and develop your own stack similar to what we offer today, it's very, very intensive to do complete that. It takes a lot of time and resources to end up with a robust solution.
Again, that 15.4 stack is based on the 802.15.4 standard. Protocols such as Zigbee and Thread are also based on that standard. We chose that to rely on proven technology, robust standard, but expanded it to add some extra features. And that's kind of where that 15.4 stack name is coming from.
And just a quick look of where we're going, that network is key. We put a lot of time and energy into developing it. And we're going to continue to invest and add new features.
In our software updates on a quarterly cadence. So every quarter, we look at that stack. We add new features. We fix any bugs that popped up and re-release it. So every quarter, you can expect an update of that 15.4 stack.
That stack also includes frequency hopping. I mentioned that briefly before. That's just some added robustness for your network that makes it more resilient to jammers and different interferences.
It also has built-in acts and retries, meaning that when one of your nodes sends a message, it will expect an acknowledgment back. And if it doesn't, it will retry that message. Security features and their support for the different bands within sub-1 gigahertz, there's some key bands, regionally 1915 for America, 868 for Europe, and then 433. So all of those bands are supported.
There is examples right out of the box. With Sensor to Cloud, we already have the IoT agent that provides that gateway reference with our cloud partners. And we can support large networks. I'll get a little bit into that. And that dual-band support, you can have all the advantages of the sub-gig network, the range, the low power, all the features we added to the 15.4 stack, and you can connect to a smartphone all using a single radio, whereas before, you might need a two-chip solution.
And all of these features run with best-in-class power performance, very low sleep current. We have the sensor controller that I described. So you can have those door and window sensors, those motion detectors, those temp sensors, all those remote sensors running on a coin cell battery for multiple years with all of the features that I've described here.
I want to touch quickly-- there is more information online about some of the different modes the 15.4 stack can run in, but I want to touch quickly here. There's beacon-enabled mode, so that central node, that coordinator can send out periodic beaconing messages. And then the nodes, the network devices synchronize with the beacon. And that's the only time they communicate during the active period. That's what beacon mode is.
Non-beacon mode is where those network devices, the end nodes, request a parent beacon. And they're free to communicate using the CSMA/CA rules. And they can communicate at any time. That CSMA/CA, that helps for network integrity. So they have features like listen before talk, and the acknowledgment, and the re-drive.
And then again, there's frequency hopping mode. That's defined by WiSUN. So that's also standard based, the frequency hopping scheme. And it follows the WiSUN specification. And so always-on devices, they run through that hopping sequence. And that gives some added robustness to the network.
I want to talk a little bit about the performance of the stack. It's heavily tested. As I mentioned, every quarter, it's tested and new features are released.
So a common question with those 13x0 or x2 devices, how many nodes can I get? If you take the MAC layer security, on the 13x0, you can get about 50 node deployment. Without that MAC layer security, you can get 1,000-plus. With the 13x2, with that MAC layer security, you can get several hundred, so on the order of probably 200, 300 nodes. And again, without that MAC layer security, you can get thousands.
So this stack is robust, proven. It has those security features. And it can scale to large commercial deployments. We've seen some competitor solutions. They'll offer a long-range sub-gig network, but it can't scale to hundreds or thousands of nodes well and maintain the network integrity. So that's very important.
And as I said, we test it. You can see the photos here are some of the large network tests with those 13x devices with the 15.4 stack. And we test in all those modes that I mentioned, the beacon mode, non-beacon mode, and frequency hopping. And this is just to make sure that the large network-- that the 15.4 stack scales well to a large network. So the number of messages attempted versus number of messages received is how we mark the success of this test.
We test the collector functionality, which, if you remember, is that central node of the 15.4 star network. So we use the CC1352R device. We have 150 nodes, the one collector, 150 different sensor devices. And we test that. There is very low fail rate, very successful tests. You can see the message fail rate and the broadcast fail rate at the bottom. Both are less than 1%.
We also test the CC1310 with a 50-node network, similar, very low fail rate-- one collector, 50 sensor devices. It runs for three days. So we do verify the robustness and the reliability of the network.
1350, the other 13x0, we test with the collector with both 50, 10 devices. We test at multiple frequency bands. It runs for days. And with that MAC layer security disabled, we can scale to even more devices than this-- so heavily tested, very reliable.
We've also done some range testing. Again, the ranges that you get is going to be highly dependent on your environment, what structures, what physical obstructions are in the way, and then what RF obstructions and interferences are in the way. But depending on the data rate, you can see, if we go line of sight, point to point, we'll get 2,700, 3,300 meters, so some impressive distance there.
And if you look a little deeper, again, depending on the environment, we can get pretty long range. We've actually sent a sub-gig node to space. You'll see some of our apps engineers and guys who are over in Norway on top of mountains and getting thousands of kilometers here. So we do perform the range and RSSI testing.
So again, a quick recap, we have that Sensor to Cloud solution that's available from TI now. What that gives you is this low-power sub-gig 15.4 star network that's ready to go. Out of the box you can have sub-gig network up and running in a matter of minutes. And that's advantageous because you get the long range.
You can run for multiple years. The deployed sensors in a commercial security deployment, let's say like door and window sensors, all of those can run for multiple years on a coin cell. They report their data using that sub-gig star network to some central node collector that's then sitting by the gateway to give you that cloud connectivity.
So again, we provide the 15.4 sub-gig network. We provide the gateway reference. And we provide examples with the cloud partners. You can take this solution, and out of box, you can have a sub-gig network with the dual-band functionality connecting to a smartphone at the node and then connecting to the cloud from the collector. And you can scale to a full deployment there.
A couple of quick recaps on how to get started with this solution if you want to get started today, to learn about the SimpleLink Platform-- I'll reiterate really quick. That's the platform of ARM-based hardware that covers a variety of technologies such as Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth, low-energy, sub-1 gigahertz, and Wi-Fi. And it's all tied together with a common SDK and development environment that allows for code portability.
If you want to learn more about that platform, you can go to TI.com/simplelink. If you want to get straight into the Sensor to Cloud references, those are online too. You can go to TI.com/sensortocloud which will lead you there. Or you can use the link that I've provided to get directly to that reference.
If you want to learn more about sub-gig, and the long range, and that stack that I described, that SimpleLink sub-gig stack, the 15.4 stack that we provide, you can go to TI.com/longrange. If you want to learn more about the dual band and multi-band that I described where you have both a sub-gig network and a Bluetooth network connectivity on a single node with a single radio, you can go to TI.com/multistandard. And then I've also provided links there to the SDK, which contains all this software, and the key device.
So use all those links. I appreciate you listening in. And now we can go ahead and take questions.
Great, thanks so much, Nick. And I would again like to encourage everyone who's attending the webinar, if you do have any questions, please make sure to submit them now so we can get them addressed while we have Nick with us live today. So we'll start with our first question. Do you have a development kit available?
Yes, that's a great question. I should have covered it. So all of the devices in the SimpleLink Platform have a low-power development kit called the LaunchPad, so on the order of $30 or $50.
So those 13x2 devices, on the TI store today, you can buy the LaunchPad and start running this software and setup your sub-gig network. So again, it's like a $30, $40 kit. If you follow some of those links that I included, you can get directly to the LaunchPad.
Great, OK, and TI focuses on 15.4 for sub-1 gigahertz. Is the 15.4 stack available for fast prototyping using NRDS.
No, so today, the 15.4 stack cannot port into our-- the NRDS solution. So it is a part of our SimpleLink Solution and has SimpleLink Academy training, and that's SimpleLink training environment. So it has training modules that allow you to get up and running with the 15.4 really quick.
I would also like to add that it comes also with multiple examples that work out of the box. With SimpleLink Academy, like Nick mentioned, that will allow you to add any type of sensor that-- by default, it comes with the most common sensors out in the market. And you can just add and pick and choose which one are you going to support. It's really easy to use out of the box. And that is one of the reasons why we don't have it right now in [INAUDIBLE].
Great, OK, and this user has an additional question, any support for MQTT SN on sub-1 gigahertz?
No, for now we do not support MQTT SN on the sub-1-gigahertz realm. But our TI Sensor to Cloud reference designs do use the MQTT messaging protocol to communicate up to the cloud providers. You can also use any RESTful API to communicate up to the cloud.
Great, OK, and do CC13xx MCUs support Sigfox and LoRaWAN?
So yes, our CC13xx MCUs do support Sigfox. At the moment, we do not support LoRA.
Yeah, so I mentioned in the presentation that mobile silicon vendors provide sub-gig stacks. TI's solution is the SimpleLink 15.4 stack. LoRa is actually a sub-gig stack, a proprietary sub-gig stack offered by another silicon vendor. So today, we support that 15.4 stack.
Great, OK, and how do you ensure that data is not compromised by hackers?
Yeah, so each sensor node has its own hardware accelerators onboard for fast encryption. One of the many things or features that our 15.4 stack does offer is protecting against man-in-the-middle attacks by counting each message, and each message having its own number. The collector will always keep track of when this message should be delivered and the number of messages it has received from each sensor. This way it will protect against man-in-the-middle attacks, while also on top have key base encryption using our hardware accelerators, mainly AES 128, and with our x2 devices, 256.
Yeah, and I think the key there is that the hardware itself comes with the hardware accelerator. Software has some examples of how to use these security enablers. We basically provide our users and our customers all the tools they need to set up a fully-secure solution. So they can take what we've offered, we've built into our solution, specifically thinking of their ability to create a secure solution.
Great, OK, does the gateway application run on a Raspberry Pi 3B percent 2B?
Our gateway solution runs right now on our Linux processors and our development board called in BeagleBone Black. It could run on a Raspberry Pi. The software is made so that it can support between any Linux platform. But our out-of-the-box demo that Nick mentioned and linked to works out of the box with a BeagleBone Black.
And for those who aren't familiar with the BeagleBone Black, it's very Raspberry-Pi-like. It's the same type of system on a board type thing. So if you haven't checked out a BeagleBone Black, I'd recommend it.
Great, OK, and this attendee is asking if you can define BLE.
Ah, sorry, yeah, I should have defined it and not used as many acronyms. BLE means Bluetooth Low Energy. And that's probably what it's most famous for, I'd say, is connecting to smartphones.
So the key advantage I was bringing up there is, you can use, on a single device, this low-power sub-gig network. And then also using Bluetooth Low Energy, you can connect to smartphones all on a single device with a single radio. So that's-- I apologize for the acronyms. That's what Bluetooth Low Energy-- that's what BLE is.
Great, thanks, and our next question, what is the range of cost?
Sure, so if you're talking about the-- just the devices themselves, it'd be a few dollars. If you're talking about the development kit, it would be, like I said, $30 to $50 depending on the kit. And if you're talking about the software, the software is actually all free and available.
So if you want to get something like this up and running, a system like this, it would be $100 to get a couple development boards, download the software for free, and you're up and running. Right now we partnered with element14. And they offer a full kit for the Sensor to Cloud Solution that works right out of box for, I think, a couple hundred dollars. So those are kind of the range of costs. I don't know if there's anything more specific they were looking for.
OK, and this attendee is asking, how do I get to the SimpleLink Academy?
Ah, OK, so you can go to-- and I can also provide a link. But if you go to the dev.ti.com and then you go to the Resource Explorer, then you drop down. And all of our software is inside that Resource Explorer. And it all has an individual SimpleLink Academy labs underneath it. Probably the quickest way to get there is to go to TI.com/SimpleLinkAcademy. And then it'll take you down to the specific technology you're trying to learn about.
Great, thanks. OK, and is there a mesh available for sub-1 gigahertz? Or is it just star connection?
Yeah, so I kind of touched on this briefly. Sub-1 gigahertz, as a space, you know, it doesn't really have a standard. So at 2.4 gig, you know, you have Zigbee, which is a mesh standard. You have Bluetooth Mesh coming out.
At sub-gig, there's really no standard. So the silicon vendors are building their own stacks and offering them, which is what we did with the 15.4 stack. That 15.4 stack only supports a star network. But there are mesh solutions from either third parties or from developing your own proprietary mesh solution that will run on our 13x0 and x2 devices. I think, really depending on your application, a lot of times, the mesh network is not necessarily needed because of the range you're able to cover with the 15.4 star network. You can get pretty long single-hop range.
OK, and what are the key advantages of using TI's SimpleLink sub-1-gigahertz stack, 15.4 stack, for a low-power network?
Sure. Let's just start with the 15.4 stack itself. So it's developed to run on our hardware, which is best in the industry for low power.
So it's developed with TI-RTOS in mind with our specific hardware in mind, so it's going to be your lowest power solution when you look at our hardware features with the low sleep current, with that embedded sensor controller. So that's one big advantage. You'll have the lowest power solution out there.
Another advantage is that you can get that dual-band functionality that I mentioned all on a single device. And then, again, some of the advantages of the stack, it's standard based. So we've taken that 802.15.4 MAC and FI. We've built those layers, but then we've also added some layers on top, including security, including network management.
So it's really a full stack solution. So if you want to set up a low-power SimpleLink sub-1-gigahertz network, you can take this free stack that we've put a bunch of resources into developing. You can take it and run it out of the box, whereas if you developed it yourself, it would be very intensive, very resource-heavy to have something like this.
And another advantage is being a part of that SimpleLink platform that I mentioned. Since this sub-1-gigahertz stack is a part of that SimpleLink platform, if you want to expand and enhance your product offering some day, you can take the bulk of your application code that you develop with this sub-gig stack and port to say our Zigbee device and have a bulk of that code directly port to that device, to another technology like Zigbee or Bluetooth Low Energy.
Great, OK, and how many nodes can I have in a SimpleLink sub-1-gigahertz stack network?
So it depends on which features you grab. If you have that MAC-layer security on our newest devices, the 13x2, you can have 200, 300 nodes. If you don't take that security layer, you can have thousands, 1,000-plus. And I went through some of the test cases. If you look back in the slides, you can see we've tested with up to a couple of hundred nodes with that security layer.
Great, and what kind of range can I expect with a SimpleLink sub-1-gigahertz stack network?
Again, and that one, it's hard to quantify, because the range is going to be greatly affected by the environment you're in. Like I said, we've done line of sight, where we're getting tens of kilometers. But if you're in an urban environment or inside a building, it could be much, much lower. Yeah, so the range is a complicated one. But our devices do have great sensitivity. And we do those range and RSSI tests.
Great, OK, and what are the advantages of using a SimpleLink Zigbee solution?
Again, the same as the sub-gig solution, if you use that SimpleLink Zigbee solution, you're a part of the SimpleLink ecosystem where your code can port. You have a common development environment. And then I guess-- so our SimpleLink Zigbee solution, again, we offer a free stack. We support Zigbee 3.0. We support Green Power, some of the nice features of Zigbee.
And again, there's probably some advantages, depending on your application, of Zigbee versus sub-gig. Zigbee is a self-healing mesh network that's also very low power. It's also seen in building automation a lot. There's a lot more resources.
If you want to start looking at Zigbee-- I didn't cover it too in-depth today. If you go to TI.com/zigbee, it's going to tell you all about the new features we support in 3.0. We have some really cool demos coming out where we're interacting with an Echo Plus. And we have a very cool battery-less demo on Zigbee where we're using Green Power and we're harvesting the energy from a button press to send a Zigbee packet. So again, it just depends on the specifics of your application, but there's a lot of different advantages.
Great, OK, what are common end equipment applications? And how can I leverage the Sensor to Cloud solution?
Yeah, so some common applications that I see a lot are in that building and home automation space. So two of them are HVAC and building security. So just taking a building security example, you may have a central control panel in your house, or let's say in a commercial office, for the security system. And then, throughout the building, you have all these low-power nodes, these door and window sensors, these motion detectors. They're running on a battery for multiple years and leveraging that low-power sub-gig network to report all their data back to that central node, that central security panel.
That panel then talks to the cloud. That allows users to get the data from anywhere in the world on their laptop, on their desktop, on their cell phone. So you can really leverage that cloud connectivity.
And you can even actuate. So if you have an electronic door lock on the sub-gig network, that low-power sub-gig network, you can actuate it from the cloud. You can lock the door from anywhere in the world.
You can receive all the sensor data. So that's a pretty common use case. And it's perfectly suited for something like the Sensor to Cloud solution.
Great, OK, why would I choose a Linux gateway versus a TI-RTOS gateway?
Yeah, there are several different tradeoffs there. Linux does a lot. That Linux environment will give you a lot more flexibility for the type of graphics. If you need, like, pretty intensive graphic display, if you need a pretty intense user interface, that would be Linux. Linux is also going to have the ability to integrate some more connectivity stacks if you want to on that Linux gateway.
On the embedded side, that's the SimpleLink Wi-Fi. So for RTOS one, you're part of this SimpleLink platform. You're using our SimpleLink Wi-Fi device. It's low power. And it's all in the same SimpleLink family. So if you go to TI.com/simplelink, there's actually-- actually, sorry, TI.com/sensortocloud, there's actually a table comparing the tradeoffs of the Linux versus a RTOS embedded solution.
Great, OK, and this is going to be our last question. What are you going to demo on the next episode of SimpleLink Connect?
Oh, that's a great question. So for those who are participating who may not have heard of Connect, we actually have a weekly video series where we sit down with TI experts in 15.4 stack sub-1-gigahertz Zigbee. And we kind of talk through with them what some of the advantages, disadvantages, newest trends are.
We also do demos. So we'll do a sit-down demo where we look at one of our Zigbee solutions or the Sensor to Cloud solution. So just to look, we actually have several cool ones coming up.
We have a Zigbee network interacting with an Echo Plus. And we have a Green Power, Zigbee Green Power switch, which is the batteryless switch, all controlling a Phillips Hue Light. That one's very cool. I believe we just released or are releasing soon the Sensor to Cloud with GPS functionality, so this exact solution I'm talking about but with GPS. We have a door lock, a BLE door lock.
So we have a lot of great stuff coming up on the Connect series, so I would tune in. If you guys are looking for that, go to TI.com/SimpleLink. And you'll see the Connect series there on the page.
Great, OK, thanks so much. Well we're going to go ahead and wrap up the Q&A right there. Thank you to all of our audience members for joining us, and have a great rest of your day.

Description

November 2, 2018

This presentation describes the advantages of the SimpleLink Sensor to Cloud solution for connecting to low-power sensor networks to the cloud; specifically, in electronic door lock and a thermostat applications. This presentation also reviews the various design challenges such as gateway configuration and sensor network protocol.